To demonstrate the reliability of the Edison nickel-­iron battery, drivers rode a battery-­powered car in a 1,000-mile endurance run in 1910.

Stanford scientists have breathed new life into a kind of battery that, a century ago, Thomas Edison hoped would prove to be be the salvation of electric cars. Ultimately, Edison was unable to wring enough power from his favored technology, nickel-iron batteries, and conceded defeat in the car wars to his friend and rival Henry Ford. (Electric cars made a pretty good show of it into the 19-teens.) But after taking a second look at the nickel-iron technology, the Stanford research team recently announced that improvements they’ve made could close the convenience, performance, and cost gaps between electrical and internal-combustion cars.

Today, cars like the Honda Civic hybrid and the plug-in Prius use lithium-ion batteries, which are expensive, slow to charge, and in some circumstances even flammable.* But cheaper nickel-iron batteries, which are highly stable and utterly non-toxic, have long suffered from being even slower to charge and discharge. As a result, they are only used in a few contexts, including storing energy from wind farms. However, by creating strong chemical bonds in their battery’s electrodes, using nanotechnology, rather than simply mixing nickel and iron materials (the previous approach), the Stanford team increased the speed of the nickel-iron battery’s charge-discharge cycle 1,000 times. A small prototype battery charged in two minutes….

Biographies

Gary Rosen is the editor of Review and the former managing editor of Commentary magazine. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding" and the editor of "The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq."